Dying Flowers in Winter
by Donna Maj Lambert
Summary: RL/SB Slash. Remus reflects and tells his story of the moment he entered Hogwarts, to the moment he saw Sirius, to the moment it was all taken away from him.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: This is my first attempt at writing in such a long time. I have been re-reading the Harry Potter books and this story has been mulling in my mind for a while. I hope you guys like it, it is just the beginning. The lyrics are from Jimmy Wayne - Blue and Brown.**

**Chapter One**

_We were like a pair of shoes, you never saw one of us  
without the other, we were brothers but we weren't kin_

I was a monster. Each full moon I turned into a beast that had no control over my body. My mind was lost and all I thought about was blood and flesh. Nothing could control me. The animal instinct in me was alive; it ran through my veins with the pounding of my heart. No one gave me a chance, not until I turned eleven and the Greatest Headmaster of all time accepted me into his school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This is where I met him; that magnificent boy that has plagued my mind ever since the first day I laid eyes on him. Well, now he is no boy, but he was back then. Careless as any and a devious son-of-a-bitch, but he was beautiful.

I'll never forget the concern he had for me on the first full moon of being at Hogwarts. His eyes were full of apprehension as he asked me if I was ok. The first lie I told him almost broke my heart. I wanted to tell him everything, about me being a monster, being dangerous, but he would reject me, I knew. I kept my secret for most of our first year at Hogwarts, but it was not long before him and James came to their own conclusions. They cornered me one day outside our History of Magic class.

"Remus, we know," came the shaky voice of little Peter Pettigrew, who for some reason always seemed to hang around us. He was a fat little boy who was as close to a Squib as you could be without being one.

My voice came out in a shaky gasp as I looked at each of them in turn and asked, "Kn--Know what?"

"That you're a werewolf," he said it in such confidence, with his crooked smile set on his face and one of his eye brows cocked. It was that face that made me love him all over again, like it was the first time I was seeing him. He wasn't rejecting me, if anything it was more of an acceptance.

James Potter punched me in the arm and kept telling me over and over again that I should have told them, that they would have understood, but my eyes were caught on his and he didn't look away from me. From then on, we were never far from each other. Sure James was his best friend, but I knew that I held a special place in his heart.

Those neighborhood football games was the only time  
you might ever see us on different teams back then

During the summers, the four of us were always either at James' house or mine. Sirius didn't have a great relationship with his folks. They favored his younger brother over him and shunned him for being in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin where the rest of his family had been placed. Therefore, his place was out of the question and for some reason I cannot explain, the idea of going to Peter's house just never came up. He didn't talk much about his family and we didn't ask. Peter was merely there to make an even team when playing Quidditch.

To make our teams fair, James and I played against Sirius and Peter. Neither Peter nor I were any good at Quidditch and James had landed a spot on the house team. Sirius, himself, was pretty good and it wasn't fair to pin the two of them against Peter and I. Every once in a while we would switch the teams up and Sirius would be on my side, but I think the two of us had more fun when we could battle each other. I can remember one time, we were rambling off so many cuss words at each other that James' mother had to come out and yell at us to be civil to one another, but really, that's just how we showed our affection towards each other.

Ah we'd cuss one another for all that the other was worth  
but in our hearts we were only cussing each other's shirt


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two **

_I wore blue and he wore brown  
but we both knew the colors didn't count_

I was a werewolf and he was a man. Well, human at least. Up until our third year of schooling, the full moons were the worst days of the month for me. The nights I had to go without Sirius by my side were painful. With no human around me I would tear at my own flesh and howl at the top of my lungs inside the Shrieking Shack. Once a pleasant looking building, the Shack had been turned into probably one of the worst manors in Great Britain. I can remember nights when I would claw at everything because I was so frustrated at what I was.

The mornings after the full moons had come and passed, I would head back to the school with Madam Pomfrey, looking as if I had been abused in the night. Eventually, people stopped pointing and asking questions. Peter still flinched when I looked at him, but I just figured that to be his cowardice. How he ended up in Gryffindor, I will never know.

One full moon, around the beginnings of our third year, Sirius and James came up to me in the corridor. They were so full of excitement, and I couldn't guess as to why.

"How do you get past the whomping willow?" Sirius asked with a bright smile on his face. His eyes gave a small twinkle as he looked at me. It took my breath away.

"Wh—What? I can't tell you that, I swore to Professor Dumbledore –" Sirius cut me off.

"Come on Remus, just tell us. We have a surprise for you and we want to show you tonight!" He said with even more excitement.

I looked from Sirius to James, and then spotted Peter right behind them, who looked apprehensive, like he didn't want to be there, but felt he had to be.

"Tonight's the full moon, Sirius." I said, a bit firmly, hoping he would get it through his thick, beautiful head.

"We know. We've been waiting for this day!" James practically shouted clamping me on the back. I gave him a look and then explained that there was a knot in the trunk of the tree.

That night, as I lay exhausted on the floor after what seemed like hours of howling at that blasted moon, I heard a noise coming from downstairs, coming from the entrance into the Shrieking Shack. What little part of human I had left was suddenly anxious, I knew they were planning to come to the Shack, but the werewolf part of me was excited at the prospect of tearing human flesh.

"Remus," I didn't hear it as if it was spoken aloud. It was in my mind. It was his voice. Was I just imagining what it would sound like if he were here?

"Remus, it's us." This time it was James' voice. What the hell was going on?

The werewolf in me crouched low to the ground and my ears went back. Growls escaped my snout as I heard the creaking of the stairs.

"Remus, back down, it's ok," Sirius was saying inside my head.

The creaking got louder as the door opened and I pounced. There was another growling and as I sunk my teeth into whatever had come in through the door, it sunk its teeth into me.

"Remus, calm down!" something enormous and white smashed into me and tossed me across the room. It was a stag and what I had bitten in to was a scraggly black dog.

The black dog was whimpering and I snarled, but the werewolf in me seemed to calm down a bit and I was able to think for myself, for once.

"Sirius?" I thought, sending it towards the dog.

"One and only," came a whimpering reply as the dog limped over to an old couch and jumped up onto it. He began licking his right paw as blood started to seep out of it.

The stag that was still standing over me, gave a snort and tossed its head from left to right a couple of times before it pranced over to look down on the dog.

"James?" I pushed my thoughts toward the stag as it turned its head towards me.

If Sirius was a dog, and James was a stag – where was Peter? And as if answering my silent question, a fat rat came marching through the door, head held high like he was all mighty. I snorted, what gave him the right. He wasn't mighty at all.

Forgetting that the rat could hear my thoughts, I watched as he stopped, mid step, and hang his head.

_At the end of the day we'd walk away  
there was no doubt that we were friends for life_

We spent the whole night together and in the morning, when Madam Pomfrey came to get me, Sirius was there to meet me. As I emerged from the whomping willow, a gash in my left shoulder, I could see the bandage on his right hand and we both gave each other silent smiles.

Madam Pomfrey gave us both disapproving glances. She hadn't liked the fact that Sirius had come down from the Castle so early, or that he even knew I had been through the Whomping Willow, but she couldn't do a thing about it except tut her head and demand I go straight to the hospital wing, which I obliged. She stomped off to walk in front of us and I felt a bandaged hand reach for mine.

I stared down at our linked hands, and then up at him, but his face just stared straight ahead of him as we walked.

_I wore blue and he wore brown_


End file.
